Fw: How To Write Extended Partition Tables from GRUB?

[Steve Burtchin]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Steve Burtchin" <address@hidden>
To: "adrian15" <address@hidden>
Sent: Thursday, February 01, 2007 11:51 PM
Subject: Re: How To Write Extended Partition Tables from GRUB?


>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "adrian15" <address@hidden>
> To: "sburtchin" <address@hidden>
> Cc: <address@hidden>
> Sent: Thursday, February 01, 2007 12:52 PM
> Subject: Re: How To Write Extended Partition Tables from GRUB?
>
>
> > sburtchin escribió:
> > > Another situation deals with data recovery.  If the partition tables
> happen
> > > to become corrupted, fixing these errors can be the first and best
step
> to
> > > data recovery.  There are tools for doing this, but a much quicker
> approach
> > > would be to add a "Restore All Partition Tables" selection to the GRUB
> menu.
> > > This is easily scripted in "menu.lst" using a combination of "partnew"
> and
> > > "eptedit" commands.
> > >
> > This restore All Partition Tables selection how would it be
implemented...
> >
> You would first have to get the information about your partitions.
> PowerQuest's PARTINFO will create a text file for you.  I created a
> spreadsheet because I have a lot of partitions (see attached image - the
> highlighted primary partitions are for the standard MPT, the rest can be
> swapped for the standard ones to boot other os's).  Then copy the data
into
> menu.lst and insert "partnew" and "eptedit" at the appropriate places (I
> would suggest converting partinfo.txt to a spreadsheet.  Then you can
select
> just the columns you need to put into menu.lst --- saving yourself a lot
of
> unnecessary editing).
>
> After a minimal amount of editing, my "Restore All Partition Tables"
section
> of menu.lst would be as in the attached text file.  Starting with the
> information from the spreadsheet, this took me about 15 minutes to create
> (first time), but now that I know how to do it, I could probably do it in
5.
>
> Selecting this boot item in the GRUB menu would do exactly what it says!
>
> > on the running system you run an script that saves all your partition
> > data into a menu.lst that uses that eptedit command and then...
> >
> You run a free (or other) program like PARTINFO and then you edit the
> information as explained above to create the boot item in menu.lst.
>
> > you can burn this menu.lst into a grub cdrom so that you can use
> >
> Yes!!! - if you can't access the menu.lst on the HDD.
>
> > FOR ONLY your computer in a future ?
> >
> Not exactly - Suppose you are managing an IT department and you want to
roll
> out 200 new computers all with identical HDD's.  You could partition all
of
> them in the time it takes to boot to CD and hit enter!  I know there are
> other ways of doing this (multicasting), but if later - any one of these
200
> computers would have its partition tables corrupted, you could restore all
> the partition tables just as fast.  I'm not aware of any other tools that
> would do it this fast.
>
> > Is that your idea ?
> >
> >
> > adrian15
> >
> That was not my idea at all originally, but I am excited to see that my
new
> function has a purpose that would interest others.  I actually only
thought
> of using it this way as an afterthought while I was explaining what I
wanted
> it for back on November 18.  Serendipity at work!
>
> I would definitely want to use it as in the attached text file if my
> partition tables were ever corrupted, but I originally wanted it so I
could
> define extended partitions with the same starting cylinder, but with
> different ending cylinders (because some older os's can only see the first
> 1024 cylinders - ref. my November 18 reply).
>

GRUB_demo_playstuff.png
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GRUB_demo_playstuff.txt
Description: Text document